Gods, now she has to keep track of how much time's passed too, unfair. 

:I - think it's been well over a month by now. She was exposed a bit over three weeks before we, er, started treating her. We think it grew slowly at first because she wasn't eating much and it didn't have much access to radiation, and then we've been trying to communicate with it and show it how to be less damaging. The infection was sort of everywhere, but it's hard to get it to leave her lungs alone, it seems to need either access to her bloodstream directly or to air: 

"That might be a record for survival time," he says, delighted, writing it down. "Starving an immunosuppressed patient got us twenty-two days, on the upper end, mean of fifteen, and the absence of several normal stages of the protomolecule's development in a host."

:Huh. Well, I'd like your help extending that record, I'm not intending to lose her. Or either of the others. If you've got tech to help us diagnose some of what's wrong with her more precisely, I can give the Proto better instructions on how to set it right, maybe - we taught it Healing: 

She has so far managed to avoid mentioning that she's infected too. Her Proto is mostly behaving itself; it's definitely eating her, but slowly, and it listens when she tells it to leave things alone, and she can keep her immune system on good terms with it. 

:We might be able to do even better with your, uh, other test subject: she adds. :Since it's still early and the Proto already knew how to be careful from the start. I've been showing it how to suppress his immune system directly, but I'd rather adjust that to be more selective, or he's going to start coming down with every single opportunistic infection at once. Oh, also Leareth is having a lot of seizures, did that happen with your patients too? If you could get us more data on what's going on there, that'd be great: 

Emril feels pretty weird about working with the creepy Empathy-less scientists, but it IS actually kind of adorable when they're all excited and pleased to learn about the Proto and talk to it, and they know a lot more about Earth's advanced medicine than she does. 

They know a lot about Earth's advanced medicine, and a lot about the course of the disease in patients, though less about interventions for those patients. Seizures are pretty commonly observed, especially if the protomolecule is active in the brain. They procured a test subject with epilepsy to see if the course of the protomolecule was different but it wasn't especially.

They can start arrangements for a lung transplant for Julie.

Jules Pierre Mao's ship continues to approach Io at the deceleration expected for an arrival on the planet the next day.

Nayoki waits. And frets, which isn't productive at all but she's terrified that something else is going to go horribly wrong because she failed to think of some contingency. Also she's not sure if Mao's ship would have weapons and, if so, he would attack the lab with them from a distance, without approaching to normal Gate-range. Leareth can do fancier Gates but she is absolutely not going to let him try it. 

She does ask the medical scientists and the Healers to get him awake as soon as he's stable enough for it to be safe. 

She also makes a unilateral decision that they're going to feed the Proto as many vats of bacteria as they can during that time. She's not exactly keeping this secret from the crew of the Roci but she doesn't actively bring it up or anything. 

And so, slightly against medical recommendations but not pushing matters too hard, Leareth is awake and off the ventilator about eight hours before Julies Pierre Mao's ETA.

He's pretty drowsy - he's on a LOT of anti-seizure medications, which make it frustratingly hard to think, plus he feels really incredibly awful and they're giving him painkillers - and he can't manage to speak out loud in more than a whisper, yet, but he can hold a Mindspeech conversation. He asks Nayoki to wake him every half-hour and give an update on Mao's ship, and to loop him in immediately if they receive any comms. 

The crew of the Roci is decontaminating their ship very thoroughly and staying in orbit in case the base on Io needs nuking. Jules Pierre Mao's ship is coming from Earth so it's probably not a heavily armed warship but who knows anymore, everything that's happened recently has been very confusing. 

They have a transmission to the whole solar system ready to go but Holden has been persuaded to wait to release it until Mao is here, lest releasing it tip him off and get everyone on Io killed. He has emailed it to his mother who is terrible about checking her email, so if they all die it'll probably be noticed in a month or so anyway.

Jules Pierre Mao's ship contacts the lab on Io when he's about six hours out. 

One of the mages is watching the comms station.

Not that he knows what to do about the alert that they're being contacted! Aaaah! He alerts Nayoki. 

She calmly asks one of the not-very-busy scientists watching from behind the viewing screen if they can receive comms here in the hospital wing, and if so to please help set that up, she'll know if they try any funny business though so they had better not. 

And she Mindtouches Leareth. :Hey. I need you to try to wake up a little, sorry - his ship is six hours out and contacting us: 

Blehhhh. Leareth still feels incredibly terrible, but he'll do his best. 

Nayoki, as the only one of Leareth's people anywhere close to fluent in the local language, will do the talking and translating. 

"This is the Guanshiyin, a private vessel, on approach to Io, with who am I speaking?" a young male voice says once the scientists show Nayoki how to get comms in the medical bay.

:Leareth, what should I tell them:

He's so tired. :Just the truth, I think. ...Not all of it, no need to reveal all of our capabilities, but I am not in the mood to navigate lies right now: 

This seems like probably a bad idea but whatever. Nayoki ALSO isn't in the mood to try to come up with a convincing story. 

"My name is Nayoki. I speak for Leareth, the - commander of our team. We have control of your lab and are holding your scientists as hostages. ...Also, while she is not our prisoner, we are working with Julie Mao and she is here on site."

Maaaaaybe that will convince her father not to just blow up the lab from orbit? 

" - I see."

There's a pause.

"That lab contains a dangerous, restricted-access biological agent. If anyone has left the lab while exposed to the agent, the population center they left for may be endangered."

"Trust me, we are more than aware of the dangerous biological agent! We are taking extensive precautions. ...Also, you were apparently intending to release it on Eros, so." 

Another long pause. 

"Can we speak to the - commander of your team?"

"He does not speak your language well but I will relay and translate. What do you want to say to him." 

Pause.

"We understand why the OPA would have resorted to measures as extreme as - seizing a lab and taking hostages - if they believed we were going to release the biological agent on Eros. We of course categorically deny that we are going to do that. Is there some reassurance on that front we can provide, so that we can deescalate the situation, retrieve our hostages and our lab, and avoid the spread of the biological agent?"

After getting the translation from Nayoki, Leareth considers this for a minute. 

:- To clarify, we are allied with the OPA currently but do not ourselves represent or speak for them directly, so I cannot say what reassurances they would accept here. I - would be willing to consider meeting your organization's leader face to face, if they were willing to come to the surface of Io alone and unarmed in order to discuss this matter and reassure us of your intentions: 

And, of course, there could be some additional mindreading verification... 

Leareth wonders what the Proto's Thoughtsensing range actually is, right now. He asks it, doing his best to phrase the question in Proto-legible concepts. 

Nayoki relays Leareth's answer out loud. 

The protomolecule is constrained in range for that sort of thing by mage-energy, of which it has very little right now because it used it all to Gate everywhere. 

"Yeah, no," says the person on the other end of the line, after a shorter pause. "You can send a shuttle up to us, unarmed, if you want to speak face to face."